Monthly Log

The Monthly Log: helps you organize—you guessed it—your month. It consists of a calendar and a task list.

To set up your first Monthly Log, go to the next available spread of facing pages. The left page will be your Calendar Page; the right will be your Task Page.

The Calendar gives you a birds-eye view of the month. To set it up: title the page with the current month’s name. Now list all the dates of that month down the left margin, followed by the first letter of the corresponding day. Monday the 14th would be “14M.” Leave some room in the left margin of the page to add Signifiers.

You can use the Calendar Page to record and/or schedule Events and Tasks. Just keep the entries as short as possible, as this page is designed to provide a quick birds-eye view. Be sure to keep the entries as brief as possible as this page functions as an overview.

The Task Page on the right is a list of both Tasks that you want to tend to that month, and unfinished Tasks that you’ve migrated from the previous month or the Future Log.

Tips

Set up the next Monthly Log at the end of the current month, and not way ahead of time. You never know how many pages you may use in any given month.

Use a timeframe that works best for you. Some Bullet Journalists also create a Weekly Log, where they migrate items from the previous week to keep it fresh in their minds.

About Ryder Carroll

I set up my monthly log around the 15th of the previous month because I never want to miss something at the beginning of the month. I don’t skip ahead at all, I still just use the next blank page. When that month finally arrives I move my ribbon bookmarker there so I can always reference the current month easily.

rynetyme

Could you possibly show some pictures or a video of the mentioned weekly log? That is my biggest question with BulletJournal. I love the system but leave planning my week on Sunday night for the days ahead (meetings, appointments, etc.)

Justin Isenhour

I’m thinking of moving to migrate tasks weekly next year. I seem to just lose the monthly tasks as I progress through the daily ones. Once I move past that first page of the month, they are no longer on my radar.

Rick E.

How does one deal with times, or is this something outside the scope of this method?

Linda M

I have several medical appointments each month. I use small color-coded dots for each appointment, and have the details in a small month/week yearly calendar which I keep in the pocket on inside of the back cover of my Bullet Journal…(calendar also used for planning ahead).

Tamara Verushka

I’m setting up my first bullet journal and am looking for more info on the daily log. When do you fill that out? Do you sit down on Sunday and write each day out individually? If so, do you leave space so that you can add to it as the week progresses? I can’t imagine you write it out the morning of! Also, I’m having a hard time differentiating between Events, Tasks, Appointments, and Notes. And, since I have your attention, how do you determine what to put in your birds eye view of the month. Man, that’s a lot of questions…thanks for sticking with me.

Rick E.

I sit down each night and setup the next day. Since this is a on-going log, you might not be able to plan a week’s worth of time. So each night I sit down and migrate tasks that are not completed, any tasks that need to be done the next day and any events that need to be recorded.

Justin Isenhour

I put things down as I think of them. I have a fairly regular weekly work schedule, but the tasks I need to complete vary quite a bit. So the night before, I’ll plan out what needs to be done. And then during the day, I’ll add to the list as issues arise.

Paulina Pia

I have been using Bullet Journal on and off for the past year, and I’m very happy with idea of tracking progress as I go. However, I did not find a good way to log future events i.e. a couple of months away. The monthly log only gives you the upcoming month. What is the best way to log distant future events? Could this be done so that there is a visual representation of how much time is left? (Lists suck in this particular case).

Is this method practical for people who have more than one event per day? I’m looking at the photo at the top of this page and there is almost nothing on the page for the month of July. I have a completely free day maybe once every 6 months. More often I have 4-6 events per day. I don’t understand how I’d log those in such a small space, e.g. one page per month/one line per day.

Jennifer Warisch

Im also looking for an answer to that. In another comment section someone suggested using a Collection for that. Then you could write the page number of the Collection (Events or Meetings etc) in the day space of the monthly log. But that seems a bit complicated to me, and I imagine loosing track of my planned events and planing in something else when I am actually already occupied. So maybe someone has a better idea?

Kelley Cowley

I tend to have multiple events on most days, too. A lot of them are recurring, so I use a code for those in my monthly log. For the others I keep them as short as possible and just jot down the page number on which I wrote down any extra details. I normally write down details for events as they come up (so, in my daily pages). Unless it’s a huge event, which I am organising, there’s not that much to write down – maybe an address and time, sometimes a list of what to bring. I also have events and appointments recorded in Outlook so I can share that with my husband. I make it part of my planning routine each night to update Outlook with any new events that I added that day.

Strawberry Cake

I solved this problem by writing more than two small and short written events per day on my to do list for that month, where I usually have some place to spare. (I use some colour coding to connect the events to the dates)
In very crowded months I just use two lines per day and have 15 Days on each page (15 on one, 16 on the other, to be exact), in your case you could as well use three lines. You will hava way larger monthly planning section, but if that’s what you need: go for it!